MERS Victim Caught Deadly Disease from Camel

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A man in Saudi Arabia who died from Middle East respiratory
syndrome (MERS) appears to have caught the deadly disease from a
camel he owned, a new study says.

The man, a 44-year-old who owned a herd of nine camels, was
admitted to the hospital in November 2013 for severe shortness of
breath. About a week before he became ill, the man had reportedly
applied a medication to the nose of one of his camels that was
sick and had a nasal discharge.

Researchers collected nasal and blood samples from the man and
from all the camels, and screened the samples for the
virus that causes MERS, known as MERS-Coronavirus, or
MERS-CoV.

The virus was detected in the man and one of the camels — the
same camel the man had treated for nasal discharge, called Camel
B by the researchers. What's more, the viruses in the man and
Camel B were genetically identical. [ 8 Things You
Should Know About MERS ]

Previous studies have shown that
camels are carriers of MERS-CoV, and that most camels in
Saudi Arabia have been infected with this virus, or a very
similar one, at some point in their lives. However, it was not
known whether camels could infect people directly, or if humans
caught the virus from another source.

The researchers also tested the blood samples for antibodies,
which are immune system proteins, against MERS-CoV. The man did
not have antibodies against MERS on the day he was admitted to
the hospital, but had high levels of these antibodies two weeks
later — a sign that his body was fighting the infection.

Although Camel B was the only animal to have the virus itself,
many of the camels had antibodies against it, which shows they
had been infected in the
past, the researchers said. Moreover, some of the
animals already had high antibody levels at the
time the man was admitted to the hospital,
indicating that they were infected before the man, the
researchers said.

The findings suggest that "a dromedary [one hump] camel was the
source of MERS-CoV that infected a patient who had had close
contact with the camel'ts nasal secretions," the researchers,
from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, wrote in the June 4
issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The first cases of MERS appeared in September 2012 in Saudi
Arabia, and the disease has since sickened at least 681 people
worldwide, including 204 who died, according to the World Health
Organization. For the man in the new report, his condition
deteriorated at the hospital, and he died 15 days later.

"There's been a bunch of other evidence that's been very, very
suggestive," that camels can transmit MERS to people, said Dr.
William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and
infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in
Nashville, Tennessee, who was not involved in the study. But the
new study shows "without a doubt" that this transmission can
happen, Schaffnersaid. "It crosses the T's and dots the I's very
elegantly," he said.

However, there are still more questions to be answered, such as
how often camels spread MERS to people, and if there are other
sources of the disease besides camels, Schaffnersaid.

The study also cannot determine the virus "reservoir," that is,
where the virus lies when it is not infecting people or camels,
the researchers said.